Dominique Strauss-Kahn’s Billionaire Third Wife Is Bankrolling His House Arrest

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Dominique Strauss-Kahn made $500,000 a year as the former chief of the IMF, but his estimated $2 million net worth barely covers the cost of staying out of Rikers while he awaits trial on seven criminal counts of sexual assault. Enter his loyal third wife, Anne Sinclair, and her family fortune. Sinclair, a former TV journalist and France’s “equivalent of Barbara Walters,” is worth an estimated $1 billion thanks to her grandfather’s business representing artists like Picasso and Matisse. According to the Daily News, she’s not only funneling her fortune into her husband’s $6 million bail package, but also the $200,000-a-month security detail, and presumably the $3,250-a-month rent at 71 Broadway, since her co-op board on 65th Street voted no on housing the “Hot Rabbit.” The pricey security detail covers around-the-clock guards and installing cameras and electronic monitoringequipment.

Strauss-Kahn continues to deny the charges against him, and did so again in an e-mail to his former colleagues at the IMF, writing, “I deny in the strongest possible terms the allegations which I now face.” The e-mail, in which he effusively praises his employees, alsosays:

The fund, which has exclusively been led by Europeans (four of them French) since it was created in 1946, will begin accepting nominations for his replacement today. In an attempt at damage control, the U.K. said over the weekend that it would support French finance minister Christine Lagarde for the position, saying, “I also personally think it would be a very good thing to see the first female managing director of the IMF in its 60-year history.” But Europe will continue to have to battle the developing world for control of theIMF.

Meanwhile, the French press seems to be further along in the five stages of grief over the allegations than either Strauss-Kahn or his wife. That is, if shame is one of the stages. Overworked French reporters, some of whom “haven’t had a drop of red wine for days,” are happy to cover the story of their lifetime, but not without a note ofself-flagellation: